As we float upon it, we see that it pictures faithfully enough
the summer-clouds that drift over it, the trees that grow about its
margin, but in the midst of these shadowy echoes of actuality we catch
faint tones of bells that seem blown to us from beyond the horizon of
time, and looking down into the clear depths, catch glimpses of towers
and far-shining knights and peerless dames that waver and are gone. Is it
a world that ever was, or shall be, or can be, or but a delusion?
Spenser's world, real to him, is real enough for us to take a holiday in,
and we may well be content with it when the earth we dwell on is so often
too real to allow of such vacations. It is the same kind of world that
Petrarca's Laura has walked in for five centuries with all ears listening
for the music of her footfall.
The land of Spenser is the land of Dream, but it is also the land of
Rest. To read him is like dreaming awake, without even the trouble of
doing it yourself, but letting it be done for you by the finest dreamer
that ever lived, who knows how to color his dreams like life and make
them move before you in music. They seem singing to you as the sirens to
Guyon, and we linger like him:--
"O, thou fair son of gentle Faery
That art in mighty arms most magnified
Above all knights that ever battle tried,
O, turn thy rudder hitherward awhile,
Here may thy storm-beat vessel safely ride,
This is the port of rest from troublous toil,
The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil.
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